Unexpected Family Tree Finds – Western Electric’s Merrimack Valley Works

Sometimes, you need to work really hard to land the latest find in your family tree discoveries. Sometimes, family history finds just fall in your lap. Before going to work yesterday morning, I stopped at the barber shop, and checked Facebook while waiting for my turn in the chair. And I found – quite a find.

Western Electric eventually became AT&T, which spun off into Lucent Technologies, which today is Alcatel-Lucent. Growing up in northeastern Massachusetts‘ Merrimack Valley, Western Electric always played a large part in my life. Most kids in my class had parents or relatives who worked at the Merrimack Valley Works plant, as it was called. At its peak, 12,000 people worked there – including my parents.

My dad started there in 1960, my mom a year later. A year after that, they met. Many years after that, I visited the plant – during annual open houses. But, I’ve always been curious what working there was like, especially in those first years, which today seem so long ago. Sure, there’s the show Mad Men, which provides some great fictional insight into the life of ad men on New York’s Madison Avenue in the 1960’s. But, I’ve been fairly certain that life at a Western Electric plant that was manufacturing equipment for the Bell System was quite different. And after watching the video, I think I was right.

The video, from the AT&T Archives, lasts about thirteen minutes and shows views of North Andover, Massachusetts where the plant was located, as well as nearby Lawrence, Massachusetts and Haverhill, Massachusetts. The idea behind the 1959 video was to emphasize the relationship between the plant, the larger community, and its employees. Even if you don’t have a family connection to the plant, the video shows some interesting views into the Merrimack Valley of 1959 as well as what a mid-century working environment at one of the region’s key employers was like.

Hi Karen – after I posted this, I found out that my mom’s first boss is on that video.

I know Haverhill well. Not sure if you’ve heard, but the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune just published a new book, Merrimack Valley Memories, featuring pictures from their archive from Lawrence, Haverhill, and Andover during the turn of the twentieth century. There are some great photographs in it.